


A Pale Pink Blanket Spotted With Red

by Balavia



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Mental Breakdown, no happy ending, smothering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-04
Updated: 2016-08-04
Packaged: 2018-07-29 09:02:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7678264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Balavia/pseuds/Balavia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pearl is left alone with baby Steven for the first time. She loses it. She makes a horrible mistake she can't take back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Pale Pink Blanket Spotted With Red

Pearl looks down at the tiny peach ball of warmth. If she looks closely she could see that its little belly is moving up and down. He, Steven, makes a mewling whine as he shifts in his slumber and Pearl’s grip on the cradle tightens.  
  
This is Rose now. The powerful quartz soldier, the resourceful and ruthless leader, the kind optimistic gem, the playful lover: everything Rose had ever been is now in an infant child that Pearl can hold, with little difficulty, with one hand.  
  
It isn’t fair. It really isn’t fair.  
  
Pearl tightens her hold on the cradle more so and grits her teeth. There are now dark stains on pale pink blanket below where Pearl’s tears dripped down. A choked sound escapes her throat and she screws her eyes shut.  
  
She chose him. Rose chose him. Rose chose a human that she knew for all of- what? A decade? Not even that.  
  
She chose him.  
  
But more importantly, Rose chose him over Pearl.  
  
Waves of emotions bombard Pearl too quickly for her to even recognise each one. Sadness. Anger. Hurt. Bitterness.  
  
She cries. She cries and yells and screams. She makes sounds she doesn’t recognise as her own voice, animalistic and raw with unbridled feeling.  
  
The baby in the cradle is now crying too. He cries because Pearl woke him. He has no idea what he had done – how much pain he had forced on the sobbing figure above him.  
  
Pearl is angry. After everything he had put her through, after all the heartbreak this tiny being had inflicted upon her, he believes himself to be blameless. He made Rose choose and yet he cries as if he’s the victim.  
  
Pearl scoffs, her tears running dry. Her sobbing has quietened, although the baby still wails.  
  
She doesn’t feel much of anything anymore. She doesn’t know how long she had wept for- that was always a very human thing to do, timekeeping. What she does feel is cold though, cold and clear. She doesn’t notice that, at some point, her grip had tightened ever more, and the rim of the cradle had splintered and cracked under her palms. The temple seems so much brighter now. Pearl understands now.  
  
Rose chose Greg over her. Rose chose Steven.  
  
But Pearl is going to override that decision.  
  
Her limbs move jerkily and her back spasms in a shiver. She takes the blanket in her fist. The pink stains red in her grip. She doesn’t know when she started bleeding.  
  
Humans are delicate. They fall and die. They get hit and die. They get pierced and die. Left alone, they die.  
  
This would be easy. Pearl had never done this before, but her movements are full of purpose and decision. The baby still cries; it is now cold from the removal of its blanket. It still doesn’t understand the trauma it put Pearl through, the trauma it put everyone around it through.  
  
Pearl looks down vacantly, as if waiting for an apology. It was the least it could do.  
  
But no words form, it just cries, the noises coming from it growing shriller and more desperate.  
  
But Pearl is desperate too. She is desperate to have Rose back. She is desperate for her old life back. She is desperate. Full stop. Pearl is desperate.  
  
It squirms and bucks under Pearl’s blanket covered fist. Despite how calm the inside of her mind felt, her own body was trembling violently, making the process take so much longer. Every so often, her fist slips and it takes in choking gasps and gives out more frantic wails before Pearl can right herself. It must have bit down on its tongue at some point, the pale pink blanket is again being stained red.  
  
It’s a long process. But it stops crying. Removing the blanket, Pearl looks down at the tiny peach object. Its face is now white from pressure except where a little form is leaking from its mouth, a frothy pink mixture of saliva and blood.  
  
No matter how closely she looks, its belly doesn’t move.  
  
Pearl just stares at it. At the tiny human. At the tiny human corpse.  
  
She doesn’t know why, but she believes that if she keeps standing there, Rose will reform. She’ll come back. She might be angry that Pearl has foiled her plan to leave, her plan to give her whole being up for a human. But she’ll forgive Pearl eventually. It might take years, millennia even – but Greg will die and Rose will to come back to reason.  
  
Pearl can wait forever when it comes to Rose.  
  
But Rose doesn’t come back. It- Steven, has not poofed, its physical form is still there in the cradle along with Rose’s gem. The body lies still. Whenever Rose reformed, there was never a body left behind.  
  
This really is something entirely new.  
  
Pearl reaches out to stroke Rose’s gem but freezes mid-reach. She can’t touch it. The very air is as solid as crystal and Pearl feels that, if she moves, she might break some spell that fills the temple.  
  
She doesn’t move. She doesn’t dare break the spell.  
  
But she doesn’t have to.  
  
The sound of the warp pad activating shatters the stillness and shocks Pearl into withdrawing her hand. She cradles her hand to her chest and feels the temple get darker. The clearness in her head vanishes, scatters alongside her thoughts.  
  
“-can go back later to see if they put them on sale,” Greg says brightly to Garnet, her arms are filled with bags of diapers and formula milk. He notices Pearl, “have you two been bonding? I know it’s been tough but I’m glad you decided to babysi-“. Greg stops. He sees Pearl, eyes downcast, one fist up to her chest, the other at her side clutching a pale pink blanket spotted with red.  
  
Greg screams, running over to his son’s cradle.  
  
Garnet shudders, form breaking down into two smaller gems.  
  
Pearls sobs, clutching her head in her hands.  
  
Why did she think that would work? How could she ever? What had she done? She doesn’t know the answer so she just wails into the blanket, not too unlike Steven had wailed into it as Pearl pressed it into his face.  
  
Just what had she done?

**Author's Note:**

> First fanfiction.
> 
> I had this idea for Pearl to have a breakdown and smother baby Steven. This happened. 
> 
> Sorry/not sorry.


End file.
